SURGIONSVILLE, Tennessee – An East Tennessee couple accused of forcing the man’s 5-year-old daughter to drink more than 2 liters of grape soda and water, causing her brain to swell and rupture, was arraigned Friday on charges of murder, abuse and neglect. Randall Vaughn and his wife Mary will face trial in October. A judge ordered Friday that Mary Vaughn be represented by a public defender. Randall Vaughn will seek a private attorney. The couple did not enter a plea. They are jailed on $500,000 bond each.

LAS VEGAS — A Nellis Air Force Base airman is being held in Las Vegas after he was accused of causing severe head and body injuries to his 3-month-old son. Records show 31-year-old Andrew Leach remained Saturday at the Clark County jail pending a preliminary hearing Feb. 20 on a child abuse causing substantial bodily harm charge.

A 16-year-old Virginia girl is facing a charge of distributing child pornography after tweeting nude pictures of herself. The James City County girl posted the pictures on or around January 30, and they were shared by various friends before a school resource officer was informed about them. The school staff member spoke to the girl and her mother before turning the case over to James City County police.

CLAYTON COUNTY, Georgia — A woman is in jail right now after police say she allowed a man who molested two children back into her home. Channel 2’s Tom Jones went to Clayton County where officers say the convicted sex offender sexually assaulted one of the victims again. “That’s disgusting and then for her to sit her and let(space)… you know. That’s awful,” said neighbor Aleia Berry. It was hard for neighbors of 31-year-old Darrika Driver to get the words out after hearing why police arrested her.

MeetMe.com, a social networking site, is enabling predators to target minors, San Francisco City Atty. Dennis Herrera charged in a lawsuit Monday. Herrerra said the New Hope, Pa.-based company MeetMe Inc. was violating California laws by relying on legally invalid consent from minors age 13 to 17 to reveal their real-time locations and personal information to strangers. Dozens of minors nationwide have been victimized by predators who found them on the networking site, and it has been implicated in several crimes involving sexual assault and illicit sex with minors in California, according to the suit.

Forty-five people were arrested and 16 juveniles rescued in a two-week crackdown on prostitution in the New York-New Jersey area leading up to last Sunday’s Super Bowl, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said on Tuesday. The bureau said some of those arrested claimed they traveled to the site because of the high-profile football game, which drew an estimated 400,000 visitors to the region. The minors rescued ranged in age from 13 to 17 and included high school students and children reported missing by their families, the FBI said.

Six-day-old Kayden Powell has been found alive in West Branch, Iowa. Kayden was taken from his residence in the early morning hours on Thursday, February 6th. But at approximately 10:15 a.m. on Friday, a police chief in West Branch, Iowa was conducting a canvass of a gas station near Interstate 80. He apparently heard a baby’s cry and found Kayden in a tote bag swaddled in blankets just outside of the gas station. Despite the frigid temperatures, Kayden appears to be doing well. Emergency medical officials say the child is in excellent health.

A 13-year-old schoolboy raped his eight-year-old sister after watching pornography on an X-Box computer console, a court has heard. The teenager told police he used the games console to view explicit material before he ‘decided to try it out’. The boy said he targeted his younger sister because she was small and ‘couldn’t remember stuff’.

The United Nations has demanded that the Vatican ‘immediately remove’ all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers and turn them over to civil authorities, in an unprecedented and scathing report. The U.N. watchdog for children’s rights said the Holy See should also hand over its archives on sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children so that culprits, as well as ‘those who concealed their crimes’, could be held accountable. The watchdog’s exceptionally blunt paper – the most far-reaching critique of the Church hierarchy by the world body – followed its public grilling of Vatican officials last month.

Nearly four years after the body of Ethan Stacy was found buried on a mountainside in Utah, the child’s stepfather — Nathan Sloop — admitted Tuesday that he played a role in the four-year-old’s death. Sloop, 35, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to aggravated murder for the 2010 death of Ethan Stacy, who was found near Powder Mountain in Weber Country with his face disfigured by hammer blows and his grave sprinkled with dog food. Sloop was immediately sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murder and 1 to 15 years for aggravated assault by a prisoner for attacking a David County jail officer. A number of other charges were dismissed as part of a plea deal, which also spared him from the death penalty, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Macedonian government has been accused of being too lenient despite imposing laws which would allow pedophile repeat offenders to be castrated. Macedonia has adopted a bill imposing chemical castration on repeat offenders convicted of sexually abusing children. However, the country’s leading child protection group says the law is still too lenient. The Megjasi child protection group, which had campaigned for the procedure to be imposed on pedophiles, said today that the penalty should be mandatory for first time offenders. Lawmakers voted on Monday to make penalties harsher for convicted pedophiles increasing the maximum sentence to life imprisonment and imposing chemical castration on second-time offenders.

Two Texas men were arrested this week after authorities near Houston say they both had sex with the same 13-year-old girl on multiple occasions. The two suspected child molesters also happen to be brothers. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office say 20-year-old Juan Gonzalez first contacted the 13-year-old on Facebook. He then arranged to meet her.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — David Steiger was sentenced Tuesday to between three-and-a-half and 10 years behind bars for a first-degree child abuse charge after his newborn son was found with 19 broken bones last summer. Steiger was arrested July 2, 2013 and according to MLive pleaded no contest to first-degree child abuse in January.

TAMPA, Florida — The remains of 55 people have been unearthed from a graveyard at a former reform school with a history of abuse, researchers said Tuesday. University of South Florida researchers began excavating the graveyard at the now-closed Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in September. The dig finished in December. Official records indicated 31 burials at the Marianna site, but researchers had estimated there would be about 50 graves. All the bodies found were interred in coffins either made at the school or bought from manufacturers, said Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist leading the university’s investigation. Some were found under roads or overgrown trees, well away from the white, metal crosses marking the 31 officially recorded graves. Now, researchers will try to identify the remains and determine the causes of death. The bodies were buried sometime between the late 1920s and early 1950s, researchers said.